Republicans sing home-state blues

On Tuesday, Newt Gingrich is staking his entire presidential race on winning Georgia — a state he represented in Congress for more than 10 terms. He’s leading in the polls here, but a win in the Peach State is hardly in the bag.

Gingrich isn’t the only GOP contender who’s having trouble convincing his former neighbors that he’s one of them.

While the former House speaker is working fiercely to secure Georgia, Mitt Romney had to mount a blazing effort to win Michigan, and Rick Santorum is no shoo-in inPennsylvania, a state he represented in the Senate and House for 16 years. Texas Rep. Ron Paul won’t likely win the Lone Star state, despite having represented a Houston-area House district for 15 years.

Furthermore, Gingrich and Santorum will both certainly lose their current home states of Virginia since neither made the ballot there.

Losing your home state — even if, like three of the Republican contenders, you haven’t lived there in awhile — just doesn’t project an image of strength or likability.

“You certainly don’t want the message to be you couldn’t win your own folks: They know you better than anyone else knows you,” said Paul Bennecke, a former political and executive director for the Georgia GOP. “They know what you’ve done, what you’ve accomplished — and what you haven’t done.”

Even the candidates concede a home-state loss would be devastating.

“If any of the three of us lose our home states — if Santorum loses Pennsylvania, Romney loses Michigan, or I lose Georgia — you have, I think, a very badly weakened candidacy,’’ Gingrich admitted.

It’s generally been rare for candidates to lose their home states in the primary phase, though it’s happened in a general election: Former Sen. and Vice President Al Gore, for example, lost his home state of Tennessee in the 2000 general election.

Part of the problem for the GOP candidates is that they no longer live in the states they claim.

Romney lived in Michigan during his childhood, but never represented the state in elected office and has spent most of his business and political life in Massachusetts — his presidential headquarters is based in Boston. Gingrich represented Georgia for 20 years but was born in Harrisburg, Pa., and now lives in McLean, Va. Santorum spent most of his life in Pennsylvania but now lives in Virginia as well.

“[Romney], for better or worse, has multiple home states at this point,” said Republican pollster John McHenry. “And he’s sort of having to defend all of them.”

Romney backer and ex-Pennsylvania Rep. Phil English said Romney’s ties to Michigan have been “terribly overblown” and that Massachusetts — where Romney is favored to win next Tuesday — is the candidate’s real home.

“People in the United States, in our dynamic society, move — and so it is where they’ve been involved in a leadership role, where they’ve put down their roots — that’s really their home state more than anything else,” he said. “And if somebody comes back to the state they grew up in in a national race and isn’t successful, that’s not really all that significant.”

But Georgia pols still consider Gingrich one of their own.

“[Republicans] didn’t become a majority here until 2002, and everyone gives [Gingrich] a lot of credit for laying the groundwork,” said Eric Johnson, a former Georgia state Senate president. “Even if they’re concerned about his electability or concerned about this position or that position, he’s still considered a Georgian — and there’s a historic gratitude we feel is owed to him.”

The home-state cold shoulder was most visibly on display in Michigan, where Romney barely bested Santorum on Tuesday.